A blog about designing, creating, and painting wooden model soldiers for wargaming. These models are sometimes known as "craftees". To me, they are wooden warriors.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Iron Golem & Hallway

Hello Everyone,

Since the game I ran at the Barrage game convention in September I've been needing to do some markers for hallways that are not closed off by a door. So when the heroes in the game cause a room to be placed on the board (or hallway for that matter) you also place any closed doors in the room, as well as any open hallways so that the players are aware of the non-hidden exits before entering the room/hallway. I have plenty of doorways. I had no open hallway markers. One of my oldest gaming buddies was playing in the game at Barrage and he said, "why don't you just make markers like you have now for the doors, but instead of painting a door on the wooden shape, paint it black to represent an open hallway?" Brilliant! And that's what I did.

I messed up a little during construction. I decided I would glue the side cube walls onto the "door" shape by laying them face down on parchment paper. Before I would just sort of manage it on the wooden workspace table I had, but I had some stick and it ended up ruining them, so I thought I would try parchment paper. Good news is that they didn't stick at all. Bad news is that the glue got smeared onto the parchment paper as it dried and settled (which is why there are those "wavy" textured lines on the side). But that's fine, these are on the board for only long enough for the heroes to enter the room. Once they enter the room, the hallway or room that this opening goes to is placed on the board at that point so this marker is removed. Other than the rippled lines on there, I actually like the way it looks.

I wanted to do some of the tougher classic D&D monsters, so I thought I would work on some golems and elementals. I've got several on my painting table right now, but here is the Iron Golem I made.

There is this old Ral Partha (I believe) Fighter miniature that I've always been partial to because he is holding his sword up over his head vertically like this, but his arms are in an impossible position to produce this sword position. I wanted to mimic that with this figure, and I think I pretty much accomplished it.

The construction is essentially the same as for the various heavily armored fighter and knight figures I've done in the past. The only difference is the head, which I just used an axle cap for. I cut three pieces of tile spacer down (thinned down the ends of the spacer essentially) to make helmet decorations (those are the half-circle things glued to the top of his helmet) just to give him some visual interest. I also wanted my Iron Golem to be a bit rusty, so I painted some rust patterns on him. His eyes and mouth are dots of florescent green paint. It took two coats (the red and the orange are bright, the green and the yellow are very thin). This is the same type of paint I use for the "glass" parts of the Space Marine figures I do. I wanted it to look hollow inside his helmet/head with the arcane energy glowing inside giving him "life." The florescent paint tends to be shiny on the figure, and it produces this diffused look just from its natural drying process, where the center is more intense in hue and the color sort of diffuses out from the center. It actually looks much better in person than in these pictures.

You know me, I can't resist an "eye-candy" shot with some adventurers coming upon a new tunnel marker with an Iron Golem guardian attacking them as they try to enter the passage.

Soon, hopefully, I'll post some pics of an Air Elemental, a Flesh Golem, and some Drow I'm working on. Stay tuned!
--Matt